Pray, Pay, Display, Play, and Sunday

Today's post is meant to touch on a variety of things -- I want to give you a head's up on some blogging and writing events taking place, share an update on some writing I'd submitted, offer another snippet of music, and invite you to stop back for a another blog series I'm going to be joining.  Let me break it down for ya:

Pray

A Blogging Head's Up:   On December 24th -- Christmas Eve! -- Mark Koopmans is hosting the  Fifty States of Pray blog event.  Mark says the idea behind it came to him as, "Why not set aside a moment to reflect on the year that was and share some hopes for the next year?" Well, why not? Mark hopes to get a blogging representative from every state in the U.S., and as many international bloggers as possible.

I think it's a great idea, and I will be posting as a representative from Indiana.  However, I have to say that my post will almost certainly be scheduled in advance -- Christmas Eve is a big family time for me, and I may not have much time to surf the blogosphere.  Still, if you get a chance over the holidays, I would welcome your visit, and I'll also invite you to use the link to also visit some of Mark's other participants. The link to the sign-up list for the blogging participants is HERE.

Pay

A Writing Head's Up:  David List is using KickStarter to try and fund the artwork, editing, and publishing for his upcoming fantasy novel, "A Sawmill's Hope."  I know David from WRiTE Club at DL Hammons' blog and I think his book has tremendous potential.  I would encourage you to check out the thought, time, and effort David has put into this project, and to make an offering to support it.  Pay whatever you can spare. David's KickStarter project is HERE.

Display

A Writing Update:  A while ago, I posted that I'd submitted two entries to "The Prehistoric Week" at Tim Sevenhuysen's 50-Word Stories.  Well, if you were paying attention, you probably noticed that the week came and went and that my stories were never published.

There's a possibility that Tim may still use one or both of them at some point in the future, but I thought I'd go ahead and post them here.  They're not more Og and Oona stories -- these two instead visit some dinosaur dilemmas. I'll display one here today, and save the second one for next week.  Today's is something I call "Emily's Extinct Fan".  I hope you enjoy it!

=====

Emily's Extinct Fan

The meeting of the dinosaur book club degenerated into raging argument.

"'Wuthering Heights' is the greatest novel ever written," Dino screamed at Barney. "You're an idiot if you can't see it!"

Rex tried to intervene. "Settle down, Dino. We can have differing opinions. Don't be such a Bronte sore ass."

=====

Play


A Musical Offering:  I haven't posted a musical selection in a long time, so I think I need to get another one out.  I have a couple of new things I'm working on at the moment (normal hectic Christmas schedule notwithstanding), that I'll share with you once they're done.  But for now, I'll offer another piece I added some guitar to on the Jam site Wikiloops.  This is an electronic piece started by wikiloops user Dogbass originally called "Electrohive".  User tron12 added some bass, then I added two guitar tracks, and called it "Zonin' in the Hive,"  because it was kind of some trancy, zoning playing against this 'hive' track.

Unfortunately, I mistyped the name when I uploaded it and it's displayed as "Zonin' in the Hie."  I didn't realize it until it was already all uploaded.  Then I thought about it. "Hie" is an old word meaning to go fast or 'hasten' and I said, 'what the Heck?' The track is kind of fast and so it sort of fits.

My playing on this is not what I'd consider my best, but it was done as a 'jam' with two "as-close-to-live-as-possible" tracks, recorded in one sitting and then given some psycho fading.  One guitar is some spacy background (zonin') and the other one's an edgier up-front guitar (hie?). All in all, I think it worked out OK, and it at least shows another side of my musical experimentation.

You can listen to it HERE.  And, of course, you can always check out all of musical offerings under the "My Music" tab at the top of the page above.  Thanks for listening!

Sunday

Joining Another Blog Series:  This Sunday is the fifteenth and I will be posting my first entry in the blog series, "The Battle of the Bands".  This is a series started by Stephen T. McCarthy and FarAwayEyes in August of this year, and now has several other bloggers who take part, including Arlee Bird and Robin (even Ninja Captain Alex Cavanaugh takes part occasionally).

The blog event occurs on the first and the fifteenth of each month and features posts with two (and sometimes more) recorded versions of the same song.  The blog readers then get to vote to decide which performer did a better version of the song. 

I think it's a lot of fun and have decided to take part, so Sunday will be my first offering.  Since it is the Christmas season, I am going to feature a couple of versions of one of my absolute favorite Christmas songs.

I hope you will come visit and vote for your favorite!

Well, that's it for this hodge-podge of a post.  Thank you very much for reading!  Feel free to offer whatever thoughts you might have on the above because, after the Pray, Pay, Display, Play, and Sunday, it's now time for your Say!

OK?  ;)